We took the kids to a park near our house on Thursday. Apparently they have not refreshed the mulch on the playground, because this bench was a bit higher off the ground than normal. So while the kids played, Brenda and I sat, drank our lattes, swung our feet and felt like little kids. It was fun.

We didn’t realize this playground was there till just a few days ago. It’s kind of hidden back in the trees around the block from our house, but it’s very close! We could probably even walk there, which is really nice.

Annalie and Bug both approved of the park.

Earlier that day we went out for lunch. Bug wasn’t quite ready for me to take her photo in that first shot, and after I took it she said, “That’s not how you pose! Here, I’ll show you how to pose.” Then she tilted her head and smiled sweetly for me.

Then I tried to get Annalie to pose for me since she was wearing the arm warmers CC knitted for her. I wanted to send Heather a photo so she could see how Annalie loves these and wears them all the time. But she gave me a fake eye-roll, the little stinker. She cracked up right after I took that one.

Notice what Annalie is eating? When we walked up to the register to place our order, the friendly young guy behind the counter said, “Let me guess…two macaroni & cheeses for the kids?”

I’ll admit I felt a little smug as I replied, “No, actually…my daughter would like a small tomato soup and a ciabatta bread, please!”

The guy laughed good-naturedly. I’ve said it before: I love that my daughter loves soup!

These are Troy’s lists. The one on the left (on the paper that says “This looks like a job for Superman!”) is the one Brenda and I have been adding to, with items like “hang knife bar” and “move boxes to attic.” The one on the right is Bug’s list. She told us, “it’s a little bit of work, and a little bit of party!”

I took several self-portraits today, but none of them really turned out the way I wanted…except this one I took early this morning, goofing around with photobooth while I ate breakfast.

After breakfast Brenda and I spent a few hours in the basement, organizing and sorting stuff. I mainly sorted toys and board books into “keep” and “give away.” Then I dragged Annalie downstairs and after reminding her that her birthday is coming soon and she won’t be able to fit any new toys into the house unless she gets rid of some old ones, went through the toys again with her. She was reluctant to part with any of her toys, and all the baskets went back onto the bookcase almost as full as they had been when we started. She is one of those kids who really does play with all her toys, though, so I can kind of see why she didn’t want to part with very many of them.

Then we dumped all the stuffed animals out of her Boon chair and I was quite surprised at how many of those she was willing to get rid of. I’d say she probably parted with a quarter of them. And she cheerfully handed over a dozen pairs of too-small shoes that up till now she refused to get rid of, and a rolling suitcase with a wonky zipper. That made me happy. I love getting rid of stuff we don’t use or need anymore. It’s my favorite part of moving, the sorting and purging that we always do.

Brenda and I got so involved in what we were doing that we forgot to watch the clock and suddenly it was almost time to leave for our top-secret blogger meet-up!* We weren’t sure who all was going to show up, but we figured we’d at least get coffee and check out the shops nearby. Carrie (who came over here for a playdate last week, she and Brenda have known each other online for years) and her husband and son arrived at the same time we did. We had just settled down in some comfy couches when Christine and her family arrived.

We hung out there for a little while, and something really cool happened while the other adults chatted and corralled their kids: Annalie read this book to me! Not entirely willingly, and with a bit of prompting, but still! She read every word! Also, when she came across the word ‘and’ instead of stopping to sound it out she just read it off. I’ve been trying to convince her for ages that she knows that word, she sees it all the time and doesn’t have to sound it out, and I guess she finally believed me. I was so proud. Later on in the evening she figured out how to tie her robe belt in a bow without any assistance. She’s also figured out how to add two single-digit numbers in her head without counting on her fingers or even saying the numbers aloud.

We didn’t last long at the coffee shop, because the kids were getting antsy. Carrie had the foresight to check Google Maps beforehand and knew there was a playground just a couple of blocks down the street, so we all walked there. Good thing Carrie was on top of it or it would have been a much shorter meet-up. And that would have been too bad because it was really fun!

Shanee showed up with her daughters and sister while we were at the park. I was glad she found us even though she had been running late and we had left the coffee shop, because it was great to meet her! As a fellow Epiphanie-bag owner and Nikon user, she is clearly an intelligent person. Plus she’s funny and brought a bubble wand that all the kids LOVED playing with.

Annalie loves her fancy black sandals that have a bit of a heel. I had forgotten that we might go to a park when I told her she could wear them to the meet-up. When we got to the park and Annalie started climbing on the chain bridge I asked Troy if he thought we should have Annalie take her shoes off so she wouldn’t trip over her fancy shoes (which she was wearing with a dress originally, which we took off because she was hot; good thing she had on the shirt and shorts underneath). Troy said, “How else is she gonna learn to run in high heels?”

I replied, “By growing up to become a brainy-yet-beautiful law enforcement agent who has a fondness for geeks and dangerous situations?” Troy thought I meant Sarah Walker, but I was actually thinking of Dana Scully. I guess there are quite a few characters who would fit that description.

The kids ran, climbed, slid, and made bubbles while the grown-ups chatted and chased the littles around. Pretty much every time I’ve met someone from the internet it’s been fantastic, and this was no exception. I knew Shanee a little bit from Twitter, and I think I’ve seen Christine’s comments on a couple of blogs, but that was it. I really had no contact with them till today, yet I liked them both immediately and had a great time chatting with them.

After a while, Christine and her family had to leave to head to a prior engagement. The rest of the kids were good and worn out and begging for water, so the we all walked to a nearby frozen-custard shop. But first we stopped at a gourmet cheese and wine shop that had all kinds of yummy-looking things for sale.

When I first glanced at the sign for the Mild Red Pepper Sauce, in the lower left of the above photo, I thought it said “Mildred Pepper Sauce” and I was quite intrigued.

A forest of wine bottles. They had some really cool-looking wines in there. I told Shanee that I pick my wines pretty much based on how much I like the label, and she immediately nodded and said, “Me too. I also choose my books by their covers!”

In a store like this I’m betting it would probably be pretty hard to buy a bad bottle of wine.

Brenda and I admired this packaging but were unwilling to pay $8 for a single bar of chocolate. Plus the kids were getting whiny about their need for water, and they’d caught sight of the frozen-custard place across the street.

There was a looooong line for the treats, but I think it was worth the wait in the end. I had a couple of licks of Annalie’s raspberry sorbet, and ended up finishing Bug’s for her because she just wanted the cone. It was delicious.

Brenda bought a cone of lemon meringue frozen custard even though she doesn’t really like ice cream, because the flavor intrigued her. I ended up finishing her cone for her too, because it was too much coldness for her mouth to take. It was delicious too, light and lemony with bits of pie crust throughout.

Apparently President Obama has eaten at this custard shop before, and they memorialized the visit by painting the chair he sat in. That’s not something you see every day. Though I suppose it’s far more common around here than it is in most of the rest of the country.

After the custard was eaten we said our good-byes and drove home, tired and happy. The top-secret blogger meet-up was a success!

*It wasn’t really top-secret. Brenda called it that for fun.

We got a postcard in the mail today from Troy, from Dubai. And by “we” I mean, clearly, our cats. Oh yes. Wanna see what he wrote on it?

Katy & Lily,
This place is a kitten’s dream! Three words for you:
World’s Largest Catbox
And this time of year, it is purfect!
xoxo,
Papa

If you’ve been following my Flickr photoset 180+ Photos for Troy, and you know that today was Day 179, you might be wondering if Troy is coming home tomorrow. But then you might notice that I added that plus sign to the name of the set.

Nope, Troy isn’t coming home tomorrow. I’m being vague about the actual date because of a little thing called national security. You’d be amazed (or maybe you wouldn’t, I don’t know) by the things Troy isn’t allowed to tell me, and the things I’m not supposed to publish here on this blog. You might notice I’ve never mentioned the name of Troy’s ship, for example. I don’t tell you where he’s been till after he’s been there. And I won’t mention the day he’s coming home till he’s here, probably. That’s just the way things are in a post-9/11 world. But don’t feel too bad for us; Troy will be home very soon. The rest of his shipmates won’t be home for a few more months, so we’re actually getting him back early. I’m counting that as a blessing and not getting upset about having to add a plus sign to the name of my photoset.

And very quickly after Troy gets home, we’re up and moving across the country again. We’ll have a few days to relax first. We hope to see most of our friends once more, we plan to take Annalie to Disneyland, we’ll eat at our favorite restaurants. The packers and movers will descend on our house like locusts on a field, quickly and efficiently wrapping and packing and boxing and taping, and taking most of our earthly possessions with them on a giant truck. We’ll follow a few days later: Troy, me, Annalie, my mom, both cats and the portable litterbox, driving across the country in our so-very-worth-it minivan, stopping once or twice to see family and friends along the way.

When we get there we’ll make ourselves comfortable in a hotel or base lodging before we start looking in the local classifieds and online for houses to rent and following up on the houses Troy’s already been researching from the ship. We’ll look at so many houses and neighborhoods in the span of a few days that they will all blur together. It’s all rather crazy but it’s also part of the routine of moving. I’ve been doing this every couple of years since I married Troy, nine days shy of my 21st birthday, and I kind of love it and look forward to it every time.

Of course I’ll miss it here. I’ll miss the sunny, warm winter days when we could go to the park in short sleeves and flip-flops. I’ll miss our fantastic house and the view from our deck and the palm trees and the bougainvillea. I’ll miss our town and our little mall with the pottery studio and all the fountains and the two-level Target. I’ll really miss all the good friends we have around here and I’m trying not to think about that just yet. I want to enjoy my last times with them, to hang out and talk and laugh with them, and not be dragged down by a heavy heart. So I’m putting those emotions off till after we’ve left. They are there, hovering around the edges, but I’m keeping them at bay for now.

And by the time I give those emotions free reign, Troy will be home. I’m pretty sure we’ll be so happy to have him with us again that we won’t spend much time being sad. Aside from being kind and thoughtful and just generally awesome, this is the guy who sends his cats postcards about how they’d like the desert because it’s the world’s biggest catbox, just because he knew it would make us laugh. He’s good at making people laugh, and he does it a lot. Even 3,000-mile road trips are a blast with Troy.

Hey, that reminds me! A while back I painted Troy a mug. He’d mentioned that he would like for me to paint him one, and I told him to let me know what he wanted, and then he got distracted and never did. And then I had a fantastic idea and painted him a mug to send him for Christmas. I never blogged it because I didn’t want him to see it and ruin the surprise, but he’s had the mug for a couple of months now so I think I can post the photos.

It’s a fact: Troy is awesome. I regularly thank him, after I’ve heard stories about someone else’s husband being obtuse or irresponsible or neglectful, for being awesome. I painted this mug half in serious tribute, half as an inside joke. And at least once, when Troy was carrying this mug down a passageway on the ship, someone read the mug out loud as he passed by and he was able to cheerfully say, “You’re welcome!” See? Like I said: AWESOME.